Nappi

Agreed. I'm really enjoying this game so far. I never liked the gunplay in GTA games, and I'm glad that this game, so far, has focused on melee combat, even if I'm not very good at it. The city is beautiful and the graphics, at least on PC, are simply incredible. Also, adjusting the volume of the radio using the gamepad.

I love those things! What did the original one say? Also, is the Idle Thumbs text logo available somewhere as vector graphics (or high res) so that we can start stamping it on old pictures? Quite unrelated, but I came across a beautiful old measurement setup photograph the other day:

True.

The ship (or laboratory or generic building) was significantly bigger. Also, the game wasn't as old, if I recall correctly. Thanks for trying, though!

Watching the X-COM stream reminded me of an old isometric game that my friend and I used to play. You started off in some sort of space ship or a laboratory and you were able to open drawers and stuff. I think you could go outside as well, but I have no idea what you were actually supposed to do in the game. Anyway, I have said too much already. What is the name of the game?

That's not for Steve to decide.

I have never played XCOM before, but I was intrigued by the demo. However, I feel like I will have to find out what a typical playthrough of the game is like before I can actually buy the game. For example, how important is it to keep your veteran units alive? How easy is it to actually finish a campaign? Any word on an easy mode for complete newbies like me in the new game? How brutal is the save system? I can't think of a worse thing than sinking 10+ hours into a single game just to find out that I had fucked up my chances early on.

Haha.. yeah. It's just that the subject is very close to what I have studied and worked on up until recently. There are good LED lamps out there, just lost in a sea of cheap ripoffs and false promises. I needed a place to vent out. Carry on.

Hahaha.. that is utterly ridiculous. First of all, LED lamps are currently not the best replacement for incandescent lamps in most cases (if only for they price), compact fluorescence lamps are. And you can easily find ones with color temperatures around 2700-3000K. the weirdest part, however, is their plan to buy thousands of LED lamps (not LEDs)… and what? Hope that the aluminium heatsinks have room for the additional electronics? I'm fairly sure that, at least, the Philips LED lamps they seem to be using as examples won't offer that. Furthermore, the performance of LEDs is heavily affected by temperature and that extra 2-3 watts (for WiFI) is certainly not going to help, as the heatsinks of those things are already quite hot. I think they will also have very difficult time in finding any RGB LED replacement lamps that meet their (vague) luminous efficacy goals, as vast majority of the LED lamps meant for general lighting (not just fooling around) are based on blue LEDs and phosphorous coating. While some of those lamps have additional red LEDs to boost the color rendering index and to lower the color temperature, that won't give you much control over the color of the light. The 2-3 watt requirement for WIFI in the "master" bulb is also quite steep when you compare it to the power consumption of 800 lumen energy saving lamps. Finally, 25 years of lifetime… Also, home automation. Um, anway.. I think the policy change is definitely a step in the right direction. Sorry for derailing the discussion for a bit.

Good. Thanks!

http://www.humblebundle.com/ I only own one of these games. Yey!

I still think you should try to announce a new title two months in advance if possible. Shipping a book to Finland may take more than a week already and I have quite a little spare time at the moment. It is not a big problem as I can always listen to the casts later. It would be nice to be able to take part in the pre-discussion every know and then, though.

Has the third book been announced already? I don't want to listen to the cast because I haven't read the book.

I didn't find the villain particularly interesting to begin with. I realized who the actor was halfway through the movie when I was looking for something else in the IMDB. After that I had really hard time taking him seriously, because I Jemaine was so strongly associated with Jemaine in my head. Nothing wrong with his acting, though.

Two things really bothered me about MIB 2. 1. Jemaine from The Flight of the Conchords as a villain. 2. The fact that Will Smith didn't even consider EDIT: Inline spoilers are gone again?

They are coming to Finland as well. Still wondering whether or not I should go.

I'm currently playing Darksiders II. The three dungeons I have played so far really make me appreciate the level design of Zelda games. I have taken the flow of those games for granted, but I not realize that it takes true craftsmanship to achieve that kind of quality. Still, I'm somewhat enjoying Darksiders II, and will continue playing. However, I already have a feeling that I might not actually ever finish the story.

This is all very confusing. I thought I was miffy.

Vintage porn.

This is great news!

Excellent work! Last week I started sketching an Art Deco poster which somehow ended up Thumbs themed. Now that I have mentioned it here, there is at least some chance that I will finish it one day.

If I remember correctly, I played it on my old laptop. Maybe having more RAM will help, I don't know. The respawn system was very poorly implemented in any case.

I quit playing Far Cry 2 very early on because of the ridiculously short respawn times. I was enjoying the game quite a lot and felt really bad about quitting, but I just couldn't tolerate purging the same enemy camp again literally 5 minutes after the last massacre. I was playing on PC, by the way.

Could you also list the book you are going to discuss in two months under The Idle Book Club? I know it is Cloud Atlas after The Sense of Ending, but for the future (a) I may require more than a month to finish a book and ( I don't want to listen to bookcast or dig through the discussion thread of a book I have not yet read to discover what is the next book (or the one after that). Thanks!

The back cover of the North Atlantic Book edition is the weirdest thing: